The honest game review critic

Dragon Ball Xenoverse Review

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360

Developer: Dimps

Publisher: Bandai Namco Games

It’s Thursday and I’m back with another review! This time it’s Dragon Ball XenoVerse (XV)! This was a welcome addition to the Dragon Ball franchise with its refreshing story and fast gameplay! I’m a huge fan of the Dragon Ball universe and I love the way the game is, apart from a few things that I don’t think work out too well. Let’s have a look at what I thought about the game!

Story

Usually, Dragon Ball games tend to follow the story from the anime but XenoVerse takes on a new story. It features you as the main character so character customization plays a huge role in the game. This is one of the main things I loved about the game, the fact that you could make any character you wanted (Earthling, Saiyan, Namekian, Majin and Frieza Clan).

The story was quite fascinating because there are 3 new villains who are messing around with the timeline by empowering past villains such as Frieza, Androids, Buu and even characters from the GT saga, Battle of Gods and Resurrection of F movies. This makes for a wide variety of characters to choose from and adds a lot to the customization. Your job as the hero is to help Trunks (Time Patroller) to stop the time traveling foes from altering history!

Some fights were pretty challenging and at times really frustrating, like the time you fight half a dozen mini Majin Buus…by yourself! Man I was flying everywhere, trying to charge my ki and fighting them off all at the same time!

Gameplay

The gameplay is just awesome to simply put it. I always enjoy playing a Dragon Ball game because of the combos and iconic abilities that you can use. When you execute a super, like Kamehameha, you feel pretty epic when you see it happen! Also, having your own character allows you to explore many different abilities, clothing and accessories so you really can be whatever you want! You can mix and match different accessories/clothing, for example Piccolo’s clothing with a beach shirt and a Super Saiyan 2 wig!

The actual fights themselves I noticed were faster paced than in previous games, which I loved because it gets you on your toes and more alert, especially when getting battered by a dozen punches per second. Those moments where you see mini “cut scenes” when doing a special attack in a fight is awesome as you get to see what certain abilities are doing, close up! When you see your character charging for a Super Kamehameha or when you’re transforming to Super Saiyan, you know things are about to go down!

As it’s part RPG, you can allocate skill points (3 per level) to different stats such as Max Ki, Max Stamina, Basic Attacks, Strike Supers, Ki Blast Supers. You can make any build you want but I kinda recommend using the skill points wisely! You’d have to gather the 7 Dragon Balls if you want to reset them. 🙂

I usually stay away from the Multiplayer aspect of the game due to lag and playing the missions solo. But if you find a certain mission difficult then joining a group to beat it might be good to do!

Sometimes I love to blast through missions on the default characters like Goku SSJ3 or Goku SSGSS, but after a while it loses its enjoyment when it becomes too easy.

The thing I really disliked is when finishing the story and getting to a high level basically puts you into “grind mode” where you have to farm the same missions over and over to get that one thing that just won’t drop (I’m talking to you big bang Kamehameha and Gogeta clothing)! Even gathering the Dragon Balls feel like a chore because you’re relying on heavy RNG.

Although the replay value is pretty good as you can buy gear for lower level characters on your main character to make it quicker to get through lower level missions at the start. This makes creating new characters less boring/grindy. However you CAN’T make another character until you have finished the main story on that account. So if you get a little bored of your main character you can’t just go to the main menu and make another one. You’d have to either finish the story or log onto another account.

Graphics

Visually appealing as always (cel-shading) and it’s not realistic which is totally fine as it’s not supposed to be. This is a breath of fresh air with all the “realistic” graphics in games these days and the anime style makes it a lot more fun and enjoyable.

Audio

Sounds are really cool, I usually set it to Japanese for the voices because I prefer it that way (not a fan of dubs!). Striking your opponent with a flurry of attacks sounds great, the sound of your flurry of strikes and the sound of using a super blast i.e. Final Flash makes you feel pretty damn epic.

Love how enemies say different things depending on who you play as, which makes them feel like the characters themselves, instead of just a 3D model saying the same thing every time.

Conclusion

Overall, I’d say Dragon Ball XenoVerse is an awesome game with a lot of very cool features! I absolutely LOVE the character customization because you get to tailor your own character however you like. Not to mention the intense, controller bashing fights and helping Goku et al to defeat historical and brand new villains! But you have to keep in mind, that once you kind of finish the main story, all you have after that is farming for Dragon Balls or other clothing/skills/accessories which is very frustrating and annoying to say the least, especially when you get unlucky. I do however recommend this game to any Dragon Ball fan, even just to create your own character (which is based off the Dragon Ball Online customization)! It’s definitely up there with Dragon Ball Tenkaichi 3…if you can get past the whole grind aspect. 🙂

I’ll just leave you with this picture.

Score: 8.2/10

What do you think of Dragon Ball XenoVerse? I’d love to know what you thought of it! Let me know in the comments below.